WASHINGTON -- Before anyone gets excited about Democratic presidential
prospects next year, a perusal of modern day political history
should amply remind one of the fallacy of overconfidence about
a party that is utterly without a compass most of the time, even
when Republicans are carrying the burden of a war and an unpopular
lame duck president.

Once again it seems appropriate
to quote humorist Will Rogers' still valid assessment: "I
don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

That fact was demonstrated
clearly when the Democratic National Committee took the Florida
chapter of the party to the woodshed for violating the DNC's
edict that no voting in the presidential nomination sweepstakes
with the exception of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary
shall take place before next Feb. 5. The DNC would deny the fourth
largest state its delegates to the national convention next summer
unless it reverses its recent decision to hold its primary Jan.
29, a process that might take some doing because the state's
legislature, which sets the dates, is controlled by Republicans.
The committee has given them 30 days to get the job done.

The drastic step that could
alienate one of the nation's more important voting blocks is
a desperate move to bring some national party control and discipline
back into a primary system whose wheels are about to come off
as anger among large state affiliates grows over the continuing
outsized influence of two relatively minor players, Iowa and
New Hampshire. The larger states are moving rapidly and somewhat
chaotically to exert their own force in the selection process
by drastically revising their primary dates.

One need only go back to 1968
and 1972 to understand what can happen to a party that tries
to please everyone and succeeds in pleasing no one. The Democratic
national convention in '68 was so rancorous over the Vietnam
War that, as one sage pundit reported, the nominee, Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, could have done better in bankruptcy court.
Four years later Sen. George McGovern's Democratic nomination
was even more worthless as the party disintegrated into squabbling
one-issue factions in a convention that turned off more voters
than Kansas Republican Alf Landon's pathetic effort to unseat
Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

Only the Watergate scandal
breathed new life in the Democrat's presidential hopes in 1976
and that just narrowly. By 1980, the party had returned to its
old ways with Sen. Edward Kennedy openly seeking the nomination
and the machinery in such disarray that Jimmy Carter's presidency
was over after one term. Twelve years later Bill Clinton pulled
the party back together only to see it stumble in 2000 when his
vice president, Albert Gore, pretty much cut him out of the campaign,
shunned his advice and lost the electoral vote. While Florida
became the battleground for this historic debacle, Gore only
needed to have won his home state, Tennessee, to win.

Now the stage seems set for
more proof of Rogers' assertion with an array of candidates hacking
away at each other in more than a dozen debates and the DNC's
probably unenforceable efforts to bring about order in a party
that has seldom had it. By the time the convention takes place,
the nominee will have been chosen and it will be that person
who will exert huge influence over what delegates will be seated
at the Denver convention. It is hard to imagine that the Florida
delegation will not be included.

In contrast, a handful of Republican
hopefuls stuck with an unpopular war and a divisive president
have at least held off committing fratricide in their debates,
preferring to attack the Democrats. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who
initiated the 11th commandment: Thou shall not speak ill of fellow
Republicans? Most of the time that philosophy works, denying
the other party a blueprint for defeating the eventual nominee.

As far as the selection process
is concerned, it obviously is in need of serious rehabilitation.
The Iowa caucus -- important only since Carter's first nomination
-- and the New Hampshire primary have been elevated too high
for far too long, leaving states like Florida, California, Michigan
and New York out of the process. Both parties need to find some
way of including those states with the largest number of voters
or revise the system into a regional affair. It would also cut
down on the field, eliminating some of the less serious candidates.
That would be a welcome relief.

Dan K. Thomasson is
former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.
Distributed to subscribers for publication by
Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com